"Merciless Gods" by Christos Tsiolkas (Atlantic Books, 2015)

Liquid/slime that dries, leaving a residue. Rogue, errant fathers who desert then are later admired, in a way. Curious males. Drugs. Prejudice. Condom or no condom? That is often the question - trust and death-wish.

• Merciless Gods - The gay narrator recalls a party with his ex-univ mates. They were at the stage when they were getting big jobs and going steady. He still fancies some of the straight men. He knows that there's bad feeling between Marie and Vince. He tries to recall who started a game where they ended up taking turns to tell stories about Revenge. Things get awkward. The gathering turns out to be their last - they all drift apart. A nice ending, and some interesting anecdotes, but doesn't deliver enough given its length.
• Tourists - A steady MF couple are visiting NY. They decide to see a Hopper in a gallery of otherwise modern pieces - installations etc. He's rude to a guard. She's furious and walks off. He thinks she might leave him forever. He thinks the art pretentious. It becomes important what she thinks about the art. He realises that he needs her. When they meet again she forgives him, but it's a close thing.
• The Hair of the Dog - The narrator was brought up in Germany by his/her Gran. S/he met her/his father once. At 15, s/he read his/her mother's first auto-biographical book about addiction and giving Paul McCartney and Pete Best a blow job. S/he moves to Australia with a partner. His/her mother publishes more books. They sell well. The last is about the degradation of old age. After her death the narrator admits she was amazing.
• Petals - A male, greek, has 2 years, 3 months left of his sentence. He's in a cell with 2 others. There's a child molester in the prison too - the lowest of the low. There's violence. I don't really get the piece.
• Hung Phat! - Australia. Zazie, a lesbian, is the male narrator's best friend. One of her heroines is Hypatia, who ran the library of Alexandria. He goes on holiday, sending her postcards from Lesbos, etc. She ends up making arty videos. After he marries they lose touch until she phones him from Alexandria, saying it's a disappointment. Episodic. I quite like it.
• Saturn Return - A gay couple, Barney and the narrator, take 3 days driving from Melborne to Sydney. On the way the video each other during sex and video the remains of a migrant camp that the narrator's father once stayed in. They're off to stay with Dan, Barney's father, during his dying days. He had lived life to the full. At the end, I think his wife gets drugs for him and with his consent he overdoses.
• Genetic Material - A father in a home doesn't recognise David, his son. The father had good looks. While giving his father a wash he relieves him too. What his father says during his climax makes the son wonder about the past. A rebuilt sandcastle becomes symbolic.
• Jessica Lange in Frances - At a party a man asks the male narrator home, even though each have girlfriends. It's a first for both of them. After the relationship becomes exploitative, violent, the narrator leaves, taking a strip of photo-booth photos and a Jessica Lange picture (the man says "What they did to her ... that's the worst thing you can do to someone, take away their soul"). At home he burns the picture. "I grab a tissue, pick [a slug] up, holding it far away from me. The cat ignores me, she's lapping up the food. I take the slug, wrapped in tissue, into the loo and throw it in the toilet bowl. I piss and I make sure I aim my stream directly at the slug, torch it with my urine. When I've finished I flush, watch the water, the tissue, the slug spin round, round, round. Then all of it, abruptly is gone". But in the end, maybe the narrator goes back.
• The Disco at the End of Communism - There's a phone call. Severio's brother Leo, 52, has died suddenly, taking amphetamines. Matthew (Rachel and Severio's son) comes into the kitchen after a late night. He's probably on amphetamines too, thinks his father. There's a more thoughtful daughter who we never meet. Severio goes away to see Leo's friends at a pre-funeral party. He was an anarchist gay with smart, sophisticated, arty friends who years ago had accused Severio of selling out by getting a good job. Their Italian father was violent and had forced Leo to leave the house. Leo never forgave him, even when Severio used some violence to try to get him to see their dying father. Severio has a drink with Leo's god-daughter, whose boyfriend Leo slept with, destroying their important relationship. She reminds Severio of his own daughter. She had forgiven Leo, and ask Severio to.
• Sticks, Stones - Marianne used to be angry about having to do the housework. Now she enjoys spending days off ironing and baking. She sees her pubertal son tease a Down syndrome girl and won't talk to him until he apologises. She sees other minor aggressions in the streets. They have an older daughter with dyslexia who's left home. Later she wakes, thinks her son isn't home, and panics. But it's ok, he's there, though he's clearly becoming a man both physically and in his attitude to women.
• Civil War - "After drugs there is only God ... My first memory of being happy is as a teenager, smoking a joint with a cousin after school. ... The sand is not the only ancient element which taunts and threatens [Perth]. This white city lives in fear of the shadows cast by its black inhabitants ... It was a thin young man with beautiful dark eyes who taught me that the sand is one of the weapons the landscape uses to fight back against the arrogance of the city ... By the time I'd arrived in Perth I had stopped believing in cities". The white narrator is hitching across Australia. The truck driver thinks that subsidies to the niggers are spent on drink and drugs. He thinks there's going to be a civil war, the niggers armed by the jews. At the next stop, the narrator fantasises about having sex with the driver. Later, at night, they hit something. The narrator asks to be let out and left behind because the driver says he hopes it's an aboriginal. The thin young man, an aboriginal, his lover, OD'd. At his funeral, the narrator wasn't impressed by the drunk relatives
• The T-shirt with a Fist on it - Amanda and Daniela, mid-fifties are waiting for a plane in Egypt. They've done Istanbul, now they're on the way to Petra. After a rest they hire a taxi. The driver seems a decent family man. They swim in the Dead Sea, hear distant gun-fire. When they over-night in a hotel they invite him over to their table, then invite a young Australian couple whose clothes suggest they don't respect local customs. The girl wears a revealing, retro feminist T-shirt. The young couple get the older couple to reveal that they've been together for 22 years. The taxi driver gorps at the young girl's breasts, making Amanda furious, though secretly she admires the couple's audacity, so unlike submissive Daniella. Later she tracks down the taxi driver's room to apologise. A young whore's in his room. She has a 15 y.o. son. She sends him a postcard. My favourite story.
• Porn 1 - She's 59, living in Australia. She goes into a porn shop looking for a gay video starring Ricky Pallo. There's a flashback to a police station in LA where she and was told that their son had OD's. HIV positive. A porn actor. She doesn't want her husband to know. Back home she plays the tape. Then she burns it. She looks through old photo albums. Not much of a story.
• Porn 2 - The male narrator, 15, has a cute straight friend Mickey who's forced to do a gay porn film to pay a drug debt. Mickey, his girlfriend, and the narrator, share a bed. The narrator is attending a church-based support group. Mickey plans to return to his mother in Adelaide and dry out. There's an explicit description of the photo shoot. Powerplays.
• Porn 3 - Ghassan has had his eyes on a fellow, (European!) male first year in lectures (in the UK?). His friend Omar is very trad. Ghassan by chance meets his love object on his first visit to a gay bar and has sex when him. The boy thinks he's seen Ghassan before. Ghassan denies it. He watches a video - "the semen on his face sparkled as tears"

Other reviews

• Neil Bartlett (what makes the collection really work is that the trigger moment in a story will release bravery or decency as often as it unleashes savagery)
• Reading Matters (When I write about short story collections I tend to highlight a handful of stand-out stories, but it’s hard to do that with this book because they’re all so good)
• Simon Savidge (In the fifteen tales that form Merciless Gods we look at revenge, homophobia, racism, old age, family feuds, love as it blossoms, love turning sour, death, grief, power, weakness and so much more. We also look at how men respond around other men, which I could write about at some length however Tsiolkas’ has his most heightened power when he is talking about injustice, prejudice or bigotry.)
• Good reads